Medical school can’t cover shortfall with fundraising, cuts

The head of the University of Saskatchewan’s medical school says while the institution is doing its utmost to address a budget shortfall expected to reach $57 million next year, it can’t rely on university funds indefinitely and its fundraising and cost-cutting efforts won’t make up the difference.

“We’re trying to do what we can,” Preston Smith said Tuesday. “(But) do we think we can solve the problem ourselves? No, that’s not possible. I wouldn’t even venture a guess but it’ll only be a relatively small fraction of the deficit that we’ll fix ourselves. But we feel we’re being responsible in doing everything that’s available to us.”

The College of Medicine costs around $93 million to run each year and is expected to come up $17 million short in 2018-19, adding to an accumulated deficit of $40 million.

The university’s latest operations forecast stated that the medical school’s financial problems were “exacerbated” by the province’s decision to hold back $40 million in funding in 2015 and 2016.

Despite the government redirecting to the College of Medicine $20 million from the $312 million operating grant it pledged to provide the university this year, the medical school is “still well short of adequate funding,” the operations forecast stated. That redirection of funds, the report continued, has already created “unhealthy tensions” on campus.

Smith acknowledged the college was accumulating surpluses when he took over as dean in 2014, but noted it has — after twice being placed on probation by accreditation authorities — completed “a bigger change agenda than any other medical school, I’m sure, in Canadian history, other than the startup of a medical school.

“We turned it into a modern medical school; we made it look like most medical schools, and that comes with a price tag,” Smith said, noting the transformation included hiring “hundreds and hundreds” of practicing physicians to work part time with students, which is both expensive and vital to ensuring a high-quality education.

“I have every confidence the province will come through in the long run,” Smith added.

It is unclear, however, whether the provincial government will provide the $17.3 million university administrators said the college needs to cover operating costs and start paying down its deficit next year. Advanced Education Minister Bronwyn Eyre said Tuesday that those decisions are part of the 2018-19 budget cycle and cannot be made without cabinet approval.

“I think, of course, they also have to look at challenges they’re facing perhaps in new and different ways, but that’s not a new thing,” Eyre said, noting despite a five-per-cent, or $18-million, cut to the university’s operating grant handed down in the latest provincial budget, funding for the institution has expanded by more than $100 million since the Saskatchewan Party took power.

Most of those increases occurred between 2007 and 2012. Over the last five years, the university’s provincial government operating grant has increased 3.9 per cent, to $312 million from $283 million.

Referring to the government’s latest budget, which aims to halve a $1.2 billion deficit, Eyre acknowledged this fiscal year has been “difficult.” At the same time, she said funding for accreditation, a new health sciences building and operations show the government has supported the college and is continuing to do so “in a challenging year.”

The association representing the university’s medical students, meanwhile, said while it has been assured by college administrators that the latest cuts won’t affect students or their educations, the financial pressures placed on the university by the government “have resulted in a domino effect that may threaten the College of Medicine.”

“Running a College of Medicine is expensive, but it is a worthwhile investment to maintain a core of physicians born and raised right here in Saskatchewan,” Saskatchewan Medical Students Society president-elect Jeffrey Elder said in a statement, adding he hopes “all parties involved will come to the best solution possible.”